"Pay to play" deals, through which campaign contributions to politicians are linked to lucrative government contracts, have been making headlines in recent weeks.

The most outrageous example came out of Illinois, where Gov. Rod Blagojevich is accused of trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder.

A Senate appointment is not the only thing of great value over which a powerful politician has control. A wide range of lucrative government contracts are awarded by politicians, and campaign contributors often are the beneficiaries of those contracts.

Obama's transition had a brush with pay-to-play accusations when New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson was forced to withdraw from consideration for U.S. Commerce Secretary over the likelihood that a federal investigation over pay-to-play charges involving a financial firm and campaign contributor to Richardson would linger for months, which would complicate the Obama administration's hopes for a fast start.

Last week, it was learned that the same company that is the subject of the investigation in New Mexico also contributed to Gov. Ed Rendell. There is no report of an official investigation in Pennsylvania, but it does not look good to learn that David Rubin, head of CDR Financial Products, a California-based company, contributed $40,000 to Rendell over a four-year period in which CDR was awarded $599,000 worth of no-bid contracts from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency.

A New York Times article published Friday also mentions that CDR is among a number of financial firms that are the focus of a national investigation into bid rigging by financial firms and financial advisers to municipal governments.

Chuck Ardo, a spokesman for Rendell, says there is no connection between the campaign contributions and the no-bid contracts. "You happen to have a large contributor whose business happens to coincide with governmental needs," he said.

That might be true, but the connection between contributions and no-bid contracts raises questions.

Worsening the potential for pay-to-play in Pennsylvania is the quantity and value of no-bid contracts awarded by the governor. In the spring of 2008, a Pittsburgh newspaper reported that Rendell had awarded more than $1 billion in no-bid contracts, including millions of dollars of work to Rendell's former law firm.

Rendell defends the state business going to his former law firm for legal work related to the proposed lease of the Pennsylvania Turnpike by saying that Ballard Spahr Anderson & Ingersoll was uniquely qualified.

That, too, might be true, but it would have been better if those unique qualifications had been revealed in a public hearing involving competing bids for the legal work. Is it not possible that some other Pennsylvania-based law firm would have comparable expertise?

Even if the contributions to Rendell played no role in helping CDR Financial win the state business, the governor should support legislative efforts to lessen the potential for — and even the appearance of — pay-to-play relationships.

One proposal that was being developed in the General Assembly last year would prevent Rendell — and future governors — from handing out big no-bid contracts by limiting the value to less than $100,000 for contracts that are not competitively bid.

Another idea gaining attention in the state Legislature is modeled after a law enacted in Philadelphia in 2005 that says any business that contributes more than $10,000 a year to a city official's campaign is not eligible for a no-bid contract.

Politicians are unlikely to favor such a proposal because it could hurt their campaign fundraising efforts, but it would be a way to sever the connection between campaign contributions and state contracts. And as pay-to-play scandals continue to erupt, politicians should do whatever they can to ensure the public that campaign donations do not pay off in lucrative state contracts.

Rendell and the state Legislature should put a high priority on reducing the potential for pay-to-play by both cutting the number and value of no-bid contracts and also enacting laws that put large campaign contributors out of the running for no-bid contracts.